Skip to main content

Lost Libraries Found

Several days ago I came across Aaron Lansky's Outwitting History. It looks so much like the A.J. Jacobs book (The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World) in which Jacobs spends attempts to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. Both books have a single towering (leaning?) stack of books on their front covers; both have long subtitles. Lansky's is "The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books." (Note: I have not actually finished either book.)

The subtitle piqued my interest and I began to read Lansky's introduction in which he describes his adventures as a young graduate student, how he became interested in the culture slouching towards extinction, and began his Yiddish studies. A scholar estimated that there were only 70,000 remaining works in Yiddish, and Jacobs made it his mission to rescue those works, illegible to many and regarded by few, and preserve them on behalf of the culture he found rich and necessary.

At the time of the book's publishing, he had collected (as the subtitle suggests) over one million books in Yiddish and begun a movement of preserving the Yiddish language, literature, and culture. Many books were donated, found in attics and basements and next to garbage dumps, were hand bought or given by people who passed down their stories as they handed over the items their ancestors had prized. Lansky also founded the National Yiddish Book Center, one of the "largest and fastest- growing Jewish cultural groups in the world."

Just dipping into his experiences as he races against time, the weather, and financial concerns moved me. That one person is able - with significant dedication, determination and passion - to enact such a change makes me feel capable somehow, or promised capability. If only I had a cause, something which stirred such fierce determination and direction that I was able to make a literary and cultural difference, or preserve that which desperately needs preservation - I would do it.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

I’ve a short story in the latest edition of The Stinging Fly , which is a brilliant Irish literary journal. If you’d like a copy (or if you like Claire-Louise Bennett or Kevin Barry or Danielle McLaughlin or Colin Barrett, who’ve all been published by SF ) you can get it here Or, you know, go to Dublin.
There’s a sudden late surge of warmth in the rough winds today and it’s the perfect day to read one of John Clare’s best sonnets: November Sybil of months & worshipper of winds I love thee rude & boisterous as thou art & scraps of joy my wandering ever finds Mid thy uproarious madness – when the start Of sudden tempests stir the forrest leaves Into hoarse fury till the shower set free Still the hugh swells & ebb the mighty heaves That swing the forrest like a troubled sea I love the wizard noise & rave in turn Half vacant thoughts & self imagined rhymes Then hide me from the shower a short sojourn Neath ivied oak & mutter to the winds Wishing their melody belonged to me That I might breath a living song to thee

Monologuing

My previous experience of Rachel Cusk is restricted to her travel book on Italy, The Last Supper , which was withdrawn in Britain because of objections from individuals who found themselves featured, unflatteringly, within its pages. It's very difficult not to write a book about Italy without being smug. Then I read reviews (especially hatchet jobs) about her controversial divorce memoir, Aftermath . I confess I’m suspicious when a writer writes memoir after memoir, as if his own life is the only field of interest. I read memoirs – I am moved by the familiar voice – but I’m wary of their cultural predominance. Self-knowledge is a good springboard for knowledge of others. Orbiting one’s own life without ever calling into question the limitation of it seems myopic. (This, however, is not to say that personal writing can be divorced from art, or that it should be.) But Outline is an expose of how fascinating and selfish and dreary and inescapable monologues on the self can be. The